Hi all,

I'm having a problem with valid mails being marked as spam on the MX mail
server for a domain. See my description below. If you'd need more details
let me know and I'll be happy to provide. I'm posting this here while this
might not be a postfix issue itself it is related with how postfix is
configured an how it might need a configuration change.

Users are sending email, authenticated, through the submission port on my
mailserver (their domain MX record points to mailserver; postfix).

What's been setup

   - A record
   - MX record (pointing to same mailserver for all domains)
   - PTR record resolving to mailserver name
   - DKIM: pass
   - SPF: pass
   - DMARC: pass
   - MailScanner with clamd and spamassassin
   - SASL authentication (mail headers mention user is authenticated)
   - No open relay
   - TLS
   - ...

I see that mails are authenticated in the headers.

However I see that spamassassin marks it as spam (it mentions that the IP
of the client is on the RBL). When I query spamhaus I see that the client
IP (which is dynamic due to mobile ISP). Zenhaus says it's on the PBL, so
basically it is marked as spam as a policy based on the client IP.as

Apart from that there's nothing wrong with those emails. The other ISPs
don't have this problem and the emails are then delivered properly.

Now on to my questions... :)

   - is mail send through submission port supposed to go through
   Mailscanner (spamassassin + clamd)? I would suppose yes as it would already
   prevent people from sending spam in the first place (instead of preventing
   spam email to be delivered). On the other hand a receiving mailserver can't
   trust what's in the headers so it'll probably check it anyway.
   - Is there a way to not mark as spam if only mentioned on the PBL?
   - Will releasing the message make it deliverable? Or will it just move
   the problem? (so the receiving mailserver might check and mark as spam due
   to the PBL) If it moves the problem it doesn't seem a valid solution to try
   to bypass the PBL for authenticated users.
   - Will a receiving mailserver only check the last header (so the header
   added by my mail server)? In this case disabling spam check might actually
   resolve the issue and not move it on to the next machine).
   - another thing that comes to mind is removing/modifying the first
   header so the IP is no longer mentioned. However this seems like a bad
   practice.
   - What's the proper/appropriate way to handle this?

For clarity: the mails are received on the smtp server that the users have
configured on their laptop/mobile and put in the postfix queue. So no
direct rejection to the clients. Only after mailscanner jumps in and checks
the email before sending (in this case marking it as spam and not sending
it).

Thanks a lot in advance!

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